Head of Organisational Effectiveness and Change

Zutari; Pretoria; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Zutari seeks a Head of Organisational Effectiveness and Change to lead design, change management and HRIS delivery across Africa and the Middle East. Translate business priorities into operating models, structure, decision rights and ways of working; embed changes with People Business Partners guiding delivery.

This hands‑on leadership role requires senior collaboration with executives, data‑driven insight, and the ability to drive practical interventions that improve performance, culture and

Qualifications

• Proven change management expertise with hands‑on delivery.
• Experience delivering the People workstream of a significant HRIS implementation.
• Ability to design organisation models, roles and governance.
• Experience analysing employee feedback and defining interventions.
• Proven stakeholder management across a matrix organisation.

Responsibilities

• Lead organisational design and operating model workstreams across regions.
• Own employee listening plans, pulse surveys and action planning.
• Align culture, engagement and ways of working with business priorities.
• Drive change management and adoption for major initiatives.
• Lead HRIS People workstream requirements, testing and handover.
• Coordinate governance, reporting, and delivery with partners and leaders.
• Define adoption measures and track benefit realisation.
• Partner with Talent, L&D, Reward and Finance on workforce design.

Skills

Change management

HRIS implementation

Organisational design

Employee listening

Stakeholder engagement

Education

Degree in HR/Organisational Psychology/Business

Postgraduate qualification in change management/OD/PM

Job description

Head of Organisational Effectiveness and Change - (HR-L10.4)

Behind every transformative infrastructure project is a network of people, systems, and ideas working in sync.

We are a leading buildings, infrastructure engineering and advisory firm with over 90 years of experience across Africa and the Middle East. While our work shapes physical infrastructure, from schools to stadiums, dams to bridges, it is powered by the strength of our people and the systems that support them.

We are seeking individuals who bring clarity, structure, and insight to complex environments, enabling our teams to deliver meaningful, sustainable impact at scale.
Role overview

Combine strategic leadership with hands‑on delivery to improve organisational effectiveness and lead change that enables Zutari’s strategy, profitable growth and effective client delivery across Africa and the Middle East. Translate business priorities into practical operating models, structures, decision rights and ways of working, and lead the change management required to embed them, with People Business Partners leading delivery in their businesses.

Lead the People business workstream of Human Resources Information System (HRIS) implementation, partnering with Technology, People Operations, functional process owners and implementation partners to deliver effective processes, reliable data and sustained user adoption.

Own the annual engagement survey and targeted pulse surveys, using employee insights to guide organisational improvements and track follow-through. This is a hands‑on leadership role: the incumbent personally undertakes analysis, develops design options, facilitates workshops and prepares plans, works with executives on decisions and trade‑offs, and works through People Business Partners to deliver interventions in the businesses.
Role responsibilities

Organisational design and operating models

• Develop and implement an organisational design agenda aligned to business priorities, with practical design principles, standards and approval routes.
• Personally assess structures, spans and layers, roles, decision rights and organisational interfaces; develop options, implementation plans and supporting business cases.
• Facilitate design workshops and implement approved changes to business structures, shared services, capability hubs and project delivery models, with People Business Partners leading implementation in their businesses.
• Clarify accountability and enable collaboration across businesses and regions, including access to specialist skills and mobilisation of project teams.
• Partner with Reward on role architecture, job families and grading implications, with Talent on career pathways, and with the Head of L&D on capability requirements.

Employee listening and engagement

• Own and personally deliver the annual engagement survey and targeted organisational pulse surveys, translating employee feedback into prioritised improvements to organisation effectiveness, culture and ways of working.
• Develop an employee listening plan and survey calendar with the CPO, People Business Partners and relevant functional owners. Use pulse surveys to test defined issues, change readiness, adoption or progress on agreed actions; coordinate requests to avoid duplication and survey fatigue.
• Design or adapt questionnaires with clear objectives, a stable core for year‑on‑year comparison and targeted questions where needed. Define participation groups, reporting rules, timing and practical access across regions.
• Manage the survey platform or provider, where appointed, and personally coordinate population validation, launch communications, administration, response monitoring and participant support.
• Agree confidentiality, access, minimum reporting group sizes and handling of free‑text responses before launch. Explain protections clearly and prevent reporting that identifies individuals.
• Personally analyse results and comments, including trends, differences between groups and links to relevant workforce indicators. Consider response coverage and small samples, distinguish associations from causes and validate priority issues through follow‑up discussions.
• Prepare executive and business reports, facilitate results discussions and identify practical interventions covering leadership behaviours, workload, collaboration, role clarity, processes and employee experience.
• Equip leaders and People Business Partners to develop a small number of meaningful action plans with owners, milestones and outcome measures. Coordinate enterprise interventions and elevate recurring issues or stalled actions.
• Close the feedback loop with employees by communicating findings, commitments and progress. Use focused follow‑up pulses and other evidence to assess whether actions improve experience and working conditions.

Culture and ways of working

• Use engagement and diagnostic findings to identify a small number of priority barriers to collaboration, decision‑making and accountability, and design targeted organisational interventions addressing unclear roles, decision bottlenecks, workload and governance. People Business Partners lead delivery in their businesses; partner with the Head of L&D on leadership development and with Reward on recognition implications.
• Analyse systemic retention themes using employee listening and workforce evidence, and share them with Talent, the Head of L&D, Reward and People Business Partners. Talent owns career and mobility responses, L&D owns development responses, and leaders with People Business Partners own individual retention actions.

Change management and adoption

• Own the change management approach for agreed organisational, process, system and ways‑of‑working initiatives; personally lead enterprise‑level change work, with People Business Partners delivering change within their businesses.
• Apply a structured, practical change methodology proportionate to the scale, complexity and risk of each initiative.
• Conduct stakeholder analysis, change impact assessments and readiness assessments across affected teams, businesses and regions.
• Develop and execute integrated change plans covering sponsorship, engagement, communication, training, readiness and reinforcement.
• Prepare sponsor briefings, manager toolkits, communications and workshop materials; facilitate engagements and equip leaders to explain and lead change.
• Identify resistance, change fatigue and competing initiatives; recommend sequencing and targeted interventions to protect business delivery.
• Build and support change champion networks and coach People Business Partners and managers through live implementation activities.
• Design restructuring implementation plans with business leaders, Employee Relations and Legal; People Business Partners lead implementation in their businesses, including consultation required under applicable local labour law and employee support.
• Define adoption measures, monitor whether new processes and behaviours are used, address gaps and conduct post‑implementation reviews.

Organisational effectiveness and workforce analysis

• Use workforce data, stakeholder interviews and process analysis to identify duplication, bottlenecks, unclear decisions and barriers to collaboration.
• Partner with Finance, business leaders and People Business Partners on workforce shape, capacity, skills mix, management layers and utilisation scenarios. Leaders own demand and People Business Partners coordinate workforce plans; Talent converts agreed requirements into hiring and mobility pipelines, and the Head of L&D into development priorities.
• Assess the cost, delivery and capability implications of design options, making assumptions and trade‑offs explicit.
• Implement practical improvements to governance, handovers and decision processes, and assess their effect on client delivery and employee experience.
• Translate findings into clear recommendations, prioritised actions and measurable outcomes; maintain reliable design documentation and decision records.

HRIS implementation and People process improvement

• Lead and deliver the People business workstream from requirements and process design through testing, deployment, stabilisation and operational handover.
• Consolidate and prioritise requirements across People Operations, Reward, Talent, L&D, Payroll, People Business Partners and regional teams; document requirements and acceptance criteria.
• Personally facilitate process mapping and redesign workshops. Define future workflows, approvals, employee and manager self‑service, reporting requirements and justified local variations with process owners.
• Contribute to the business case and, where applicable, system and implementation partner evaluation, assessing business fit and implementation implications.
• Work with Technology and implementation partners to translate approved requirements into configuration decisions and manage business dependencies, risks and scope changes.
• Coordinate data cleansing, mapping, migration validation and reconciliation with accountable data owners; ensure reporting lines and role and organisation structures are accurately represented.
• Develop end‑to‑end business test scenarios, coordinate user acceptance testing and personally participate in validation. Track defects and secure process owner acceptance against agreed criteria.
• Partner with Technology and relevant control owners to ensure business access requirements, approval controls, privacy and security requirements are addressed.
• Develop and deliver the change, communication, training and user support approach for People teams, managers and employees.
• Assess business readiness, prepare recommendations for go‑live and coordinate cutover dependencies through agreed programme governance.
• Coordinate post‑launch stabilisation, resolve business process and adoption issues, and complete a documented handover to designated system and process owners.
• Track adoption and benefits, including process efficiency, data and reporting reliability, user experience and reduction in manual work.

Delivery governance and working relationships

• Maintain integrated delivery plans, milestones, risk and issue logs, budgets where delegated, and concise progress reporting. Escalate decisions, resource constraints and unresolved dependencies promptly.
• Lead through matrix relationships and manage external partner deliverables where assigned, assuring quality and knowledge transfer.
• Use existing governance wherever practical. Recommend material organisation changes to the CPO and business leaders for approval within agreed delegations.

Accountability and functional interfaces

• The CPO and executives sponsor culture, and leaders own culture, engagement and change within their teams; OE’s current culture scope is limited to diagnostics and targeted interventions linked to employee listening. People Business Partners lead delivery of change, engagement actions and organisational interventions in their businesses. OE owns organisation design, the change approach, employee listening and action tracking. Talent owns talent acquisition, succession, mobility and emerging talent; the Head of L&D owns leadership and capability development; DEI sits with the designated DEI role; Reward owns performance, reward and recognition frameworks.
• OE leads the overall HRIS People business implementation; functional owners approve process requirements, controls and testing. Technology owns architecture, integrations and security. People Operations and designated system owners retain ongoing administration, support and data stewardship after handover.
• Prioritise the delivery portfolio with the CPO and agree project resources and decision authority. Lead through matrix teams and specialist partners; elevate delivery constraints before committing to competing programmes.

Measures of success

• Targets are agreed with the CPO. Measures cover delivery of approved changes; role and decision clarity; sustained adoption; HRIS readiness, stability and handover; and validated benefits. Survey measures include delivery quality, response coverage, actionable insight, action follow‑through and evidenced improvement in priority themes. Engagement scores and commercial outcomes are shared with business leaders; response rate or score improvement alone does not demonstrate impact.
• Approximately 10 years’ relevant experience across organisational design, organisational effectiveness and change management, including substantial hands‑on delivery of complex change.
• Relevant degree in Human Resources, Industrial or Organisational Psychology, Business or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant professional experience.
• Postgraduate qualification and recognised change management, OD or project management certification are advantageous.
• Essential: demonstrated change management expertise, with evidence of personally developing and executing impact assessments, stakeholder plans, readiness activities and adoption interventions.
• Essential: experience delivering the People business workstream of a significant HRIS implementation, covering process design, requirements, testing, deployment and adoption.
• Essential: hands‑on experience delivering engagement or employee listening surveys, analysing quantitative and qualitative feedback, facilitating action planning and tracking outcomes.
• Proven experience implementing organisation or operating model changes and influencing senior leaders in a complex, matrix organisation.
• Professional services, engineering or consulting experience, and delivery across African and Middle Eastern markets, are advantageous.

We believe that a diverse workforce is key to our business success. We seek the best people for our jobs based on their skills, qualifications, and experience. We embrace the principle of equal opportunity in employment, and we work towards eliminating all forms of unlawful discrimination in our employment practices. In support of diversity and the equal opportunity principle, preference will be given to individuals from designated groups.